IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nas/journl/v122y2025pe2418424122.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Human beauty illustrates the economic impact of heritable physical traits

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel S. Hamermesh

    (c National Bureau of Economic Research , Cambridge , MA 02138-5398)

  • Anwen Zhang

    (f Global Labor Organization , Essen 45141 , Germany)

Abstract

Intergenerational transmission of inequality is a central question in the social sciences. We use one trait, beauty, to infer how much parents’ physical characteristics transmit inequality across generations. Analyses of a large-scale longitudinal dataset in the United States, and a much smaller dataset of Chinese parents and children, show that increases in parents’ looks are associated with increases in their child’s looks. A large dataset of U.S. siblings shows a positive correlation of their beauty. The appropriate weighted average from the three samples shows that a one SD increase in ratings of both parents’ looks is associated with a 0.25 SD increase in their child’s. Coupling these estimates with those from large literatures measuring the impact of beauty on earnings and the intergenerational elasticity of income suggests that a one SD difference in parents’ looks is correlated with a 0.074 SD difference in their adult child’s earnings, about U.S. $2,170 annually.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel S. Hamermesh & Anwen Zhang, 2025. "Human beauty illustrates the economic impact of heritable physical traits," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 122(6), pages 2418424122-, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:nas:journl:v:122:y:2025:p:e2418424122
    DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2418424122
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2418424122
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1073/pnas.2418424122?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nas:journl:v:122:y:2025:p:e2418424122. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: PNAS Product Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.pnas.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.